Find a Lawyer Chapter or Student Chapter

Join The Conversation

Janson Wu

The LGBT rights movement has made extraordinary progress in just the past few years, let alone the past 11 years since Massachusetts became the first state to usher in marriage equality. Now, of course, marriage equality is the law of the land from sea to shining sea. Many people have put the rainbow flags away, thinking the fight for full equality is over. The reality is though, the fight is far from over.

“Now you can see what seemed an impossible victory in 2003 and now seeming almost inevitable in 2015 and I think that’s kind of the theme of our work going forward: what are those kind of impossible dreams we can think of right now that we can make inevitable in five, ten, fifteen years,” Wu said.

In the interview, Wu also noted the role litigation plays in the LGBT rights movement, not only as a legal remedy to discrimination, but also as a tool to educate Americans.

“Litigation is actually a great vehicle for education because what we know is that the public can understand and really sympathize with stories of harm. When you have litigation, you generally have a plaintiff who is harmed, so we always try to, when appropriate, use our plaintiffs as a way of educating.”

After marriage equality, what are the issues the LGBT community faces? Where are the legal efforts in the movement taking place and where will they head in the future? View the full interview with Janson Wu below.

by Janson Wu. Wu is a staff attorney with Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD) in Boston and the recipient of ACS’s 2012 David Carliner Award. He is also co-counsel in two of the DOMA challenges (Gill v. OPM and Pedersen v. OPM). While those cases were not granted cert by the U.S. Supreme Court, he remains committed to doing whatever it takes to ensure that DOMA is no longer the law of the land.

The predictions surrounding the U.S. Supreme Court's decision last Friday to grant certiorari in two LGBT cases began long before conference day. For months, court-watchers wondered whether the Court would grant review in the Perry case challenging the constitutionality of California's Proposition 8, which limits marriage to straight couples. Or would the Court deny certiorari and leave the Ninth Circuit’s narrowly crafted decision intact, which overturned Proposition 8 only without inflicting collateral damage to the other 30 state constitutional amendments banning marriage for loving and committed gay couples.

In contrast, many felt confident that the Court would review one of the four cases challenging the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).The trickier question was which case would the Court take.

In the end, the Court agreed to hear the Proposition 8 case, and choose the ACLU’s Windsor case as its preferred vehicle for reviewing the constitutionality of DOMA.

Calling balls and strikes, is that what marriage equality will come down to? Arguably one of the more conservative Supreme Court’s in modern history has chosen to wade into a major equality battle, and its Chief Justice once said that judging is akin in some ways to being a baseball umpire.

Of course since that statement during his confirmation hearings in 2005, the Roberts Court has dealt with matters far weightier than those found on a baseball field. The Court has also shown that judging is a good bit more complicated. Have you read all the opinions, concurring opinions and dissents in the Court’s actions this year on the landmark health care reform law?

Janson Wu, a staff attorney for Gay & Lesbian Advocates & Defenders (GLAD), noted some concern, telling ACSBlog, “The fact that the Court decided to hear both a challenge to DOMA and Proposition 8 presents obvious opportunities and risks. All of us fighting for LGBT rights obviously hope for the best case scenario and realize that there is so much work to make that happen. Now is not the time to wait and see how the Court decides. Instead, it is more important than ever for use to continue to achieve victories at both the state and federal level in the next few months, before the Supreme Court decides these cases.”

While those pushing for marriage equality are rooting for the demise of DOMA, a blatantly discriminatory law that has treated same-sex couples as second class citizens denying them scores of federal benefits that their straight counterparts enjoy or take for granted, others are concerned about a potentially disastrous ruling in the Proposition 8 case.